Beggars Banquet

by Ian Rankin

  He leaned towards me. ‘This place bugged?’

  I blinked, decided I’d heard him correctly, and said I wouldn’t know.

  ‘Well, hell, doesn’t matter to me if it is. Listen,’ he nodded towards the painting, ‘that is some kind of sick joke, don’t you think?’

  I swallowed. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  Hefferwhite took my arm and led me around the table, so we were directly in front of the painting. ‘Ronny was my friend. He blew his brains out. Your Prime Minister thinks I want to be reminded of that? I think this is supposed to tell me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’ll take some thinking. You British are devious bastards.’

  ‘I feel I should object to that.’

  Hefferwhite ignored me. ‘Ronny painted the first version of Herbert in Paris, ’forty-nine or ’fifty.’ He frowned. ‘Must’ve been ’fifty. Know who Herbert was?’ He was studying the painting now. At first, his eyes flicked over it. Then he stared a little harder, picking out that section and this, concentrating.

  ‘Who?’ The champagne flute shook in my hand. Death, I thought, would come as some relief. And not a moment too soon.

  ‘Some guy we shared rooms with, never knew his second name. He said second names were shackles. Not like Malcolm X and all that, Herbert was white, nicely brought-up. Wanted to study Sartre, wanted to write plays and films and I don’t know what. Jesus, I’ve often wondered what happened to him. I know Ronny did, too.’ He sniffed, lifted a canapé from a passing tray and shoved it into his mouth. ‘Anyway,’ he said through the crumbs, ‘Herbert - he didn’t like us calling him Herb - he used to go out running. Healthy body, healthy mind, that was his creed. He’d go out before dawn, usually just as we were going to bed. Always wanted us to go with him, said we’d see the world differently after a run.’ He smiled at the memory, looked at the painting again. ‘That’s him running along the Seine, only the river’s filled with philosophers and their books, all drowning.’

  He kept looking at the painting, and I could feel the memories welling in him. I let him look. I wanted him to look. It was more his painting than anyone’s. I could see that now. I knew I should say something . . . like, ‘that’s very interesting’, or ‘that explains so much’. But I didn’t. I stared at the painting, too, and it was as though we were alone in that crowded, noisy room. We might have been on a desert island, or in a time machine. I saw Herbert running, saw his hunger. I saw his passion for questions and the seeking out of answers. I saw why philosophers always failed, and why they went on trying despite the fact. I saw the whole bloody story. And the colours: they were elemental, but they were of the city, too. They were Paris, not long after the war, the recuperating city. Blood and sweat and the simple, feral need to go on living.

  To go on living.

  My eyes were filling with water. I was about to say something crass, something like ‘thank you’, but Hefferwhite beat me to it, leaned towards me so his voice could drop to a whisper.

  ‘It’s a hell of a fake.’

  And with that, and a pat on my shoulder, he drifted back into the party.

  ‘I could have died,’ I told Jance. It was straight afterwards. I was still wearing the Armani, pacing the floor of my flat. It’s not much - third floor, two bedrooms, Maida Vale - but I was happy to see it. I could hardly get the tears out of my eyes. The telephone was in my hand . . . I just had to tell somebody, and who could I tell but Jance?‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ve never asked about the client.’

  ‘I didn’t want to know. Jance, I swear to God, I nearly died.’

  He chuckled, not really understanding. He was in Zurich, sounded further away still. ‘I knew Joe already had a couple of Voores,’ he said. ‘He’s got some other stuff too - but he doesn’t broadcast the fact. That’s why he was perfect for Herbert in Motion.’

  ‘But he was talking about not wanting to be reminded of the suicide.’

  ‘He was talking about why the painting was there.’

  ‘He thought it must be a message.’

  Jance sighed. ‘Politics. Who understands politics?’

  I sighed with him. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

  ‘Don’t blame you. I never understood why you started in the first place.’

  ‘Let’s say I lost faith.’

  ‘Me, I never had much to start with. Listen, you haven’t told anyone else?’

  ‘Who would I tell?’ My mouth dropped open. ‘But I left a note.’

  ‘A note?’

  ‘For my boss.’

  ‘Might I suggest you go retrieve it?’

  Beginning to tremble all over again, I went out in search of a taxi.

  The night security people knew who I was, and let me into the building. I’d worked there before at night - it was the only time I could strip and replace the canvases.‘Busy tonight, eh?’ the guard said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Busy tonight,’ he repeated. ‘Your boss is already in.’

  ‘When did he arrive?’

  ‘Not five minutes ago. He was running.’

  ‘Running?’

  ‘Said he needed a pee.’

  I ran too, ran as fast as I could through the galleries and towards the offices, the paintings a blur either side of me. Running like Herbert, I thought. There was a light in my superior’s office, and the door was ajar. But the room itself was empty. I walked to the desk and saw my note there, still in its sealed envelope. I picked it up and stuffed it into my jacket, just as my superior came into the room.

  ‘Oh, good man,’ he said, rubbing his hands to dry them. ‘You got the message.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, trying to still my breathing. Message: I hadn’t checked my machine.

  ‘Thought if we did a couple of evenings it would sort out the Rothko.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘No need to be so formal though.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘The suit,’ he said.

  ‘Drinks at Number Ten,’ I explained.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘PM happy with his Voore?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘You know he only wanted it to impress some American? One of his aides told me.’

  ‘Joseph Hefferwhite,’ I said.

  ‘And was he impressed?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, it keeps us sweet with the PM, and we all know who holds the purse-strings.’ My superior made himself comfortable in his chair and looked at his desk. ‘Where’s that envelope?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was an envelope here.’ He looked down at the floor.

  I swallowed, dry-mouthed. ‘I’ve got it,’ I said. He looked startled, but I managed a smile. ‘It was from me, proposing we spend an evening or two on Rothko.’

  My superior beamed. ‘Great minds, eh?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Sit down then, let’s get started.’ I pulled over a chair. ‘Can I let you into a secret? I detest Rothko.’

  I smiled again. ‘I’m not too keen myself.’

  ‘Sometimes I think a student could do his stuff just as well, maybe even better.’

  ‘But then it wouldn’t be his, would it?’

  ‘Ah, there’s the rub.’

  But I thought of the Voore fake, and Joe Hefferwhite’s story, and my own reactions to the painting - to what was, when all’s said and done, a copy - and I began to wonder . . .

  Glimmer

  This is the way the sixties ends.Someone told you Anita’s a witch. You can believe it. When you ask her: ‘Black or white?’ she says: ‘Black.’ So you don’t put any milk in her coffee. She tips some of it on to the carpet, leaving room for a measure of JD. Then she goes to find Keith or Brian. Or somebody.

  You screw the top back on the bottle, stepping around the coffee patch. The floor accepts this latest insult, this new recruit to its wash of . . .

  Wash of what? Come on,
you’re the writer here. You need to describe that carpet, keep the metaphor going. ‘Recruit’ because the floor looks like a battlefield. Original carpet colour: raw liver. Not much of that on view beneath the layered effluvium of trodden crisps, sandwich crusts, paper bags, butt ends, spent matches, roaches, chocolate wrappings. The drinks cans, the bottles, the music papers and magazines, autographed photos, flash-bulbs, envelopes and tape reels.

  (How much of this do you need?)

  Look there: beside a cigarette packet - three crumpled balls of paper. Lyric sheets. Let’s pick up one of those, unravel it. A rough draft, just a few lines really, searching for an internal rhyme. At the top, the words ‘Tea and Sympathy’ underlined, followed by a double question mark: the song’s working title.

  The band photo: might be worth something to the groupies outside. Except most of them have gone further: their bodies are their autograph books. They trade stories of scenes they’ve been part of, tales you’d have to tone down even for the Sunday scandal-sheets. It’s four in the morning now, but you can bet there’ll still be a huddle outside the studio. Sometimes someone takes pity, gives orders for hot tea to be dispensed, with or without the sympathy. Four o’clock and London feels like a backwater. There’s a man seated on the floor in the corner. He’s asleep. He was asleep twelve hours ago. Twice now you’ve checked he’s still breathing. Thin grey hair, curdled beard, clothes from California. He’s a writer too, only he’s more famous than you. His first novel made him rich. He’s been working eight years on a follow-up. When he was last awake, you interviewed him for your piece.

  ‘This’, he told you, ‘is the beginning of the negation of a generation. The cusp of devilment, my friend, seizing the day and wringing its neck. All God’s children got wings, but only acid has the flight schedule. You have the look of a smoker: give me a cigarette.’

  You’d seen him described once as ‘a lost generation guru’. More than one meaning there, friend.

  Where did they come from, these people? They seemed to attach themselves to the band for hours, days, weeks. They seemed to do so with ease. But the core of the band . . . you’ve yet to see anyone penetrate that. Like there’s some inner sanctum, someplace no one else is allowed. That’s what you want your piece to penetrate; yours would be the last word, the defining statement. This was the deal you’d made with yourself.

  Biography: born working class; local secondary modern; art college and rhythm guitar in a couple of groups. Then you’d written your four angry plays and they’d become a quartet, a success on the London stage, now touring the provinces. Nobody got all the jokes; nobody got all the anger.

  The thing is: you’re not angry now. But anger is what everyone wants from you. You’ve written five hundred words on the band, only another four and a half thousand to go. And there are girls outside who would sleep with you for your mere proximity to something they can’t have. And there’s a man asleep in the corner who earns more for a public lecture than you did for your first two plays. And as he told you, he lectures off the top of his head. The head you’re itching to kick, but not in an angry way . . .

  And here’s Anita again, and she’s saying: ‘You’re my chauffeur, darling.’ Handing you some keys, she pecks your cheek, her eyes smeared black. You ask her what your name is, and she laughs.

  ‘Chauffeurs don’t have names, liebchen.’

  Then she leads you out to the Bentley.

  The girls outside, they don’t like Anita. They offer her dark glances. Does Anita have one of those metaphysical backstage passes, the kind marked ‘All Areas’? No, you don’t think so, and it seems to annoy her. For all her power, all her obvious allure, she lacks that final ticket of admission.

  So you’re driving through the silent streets, getting further and further away from your story, and she’s spread across the back seat. The windows are open and her hair is flying across her face. She’s singing the same notes over and over.

  ‘Ooo-ooo; ooo-ooo.’

  She asks you what they sound like.

  ‘A train,’ you yell into the wind. ‘You know, the whistle blowing.’

  She smiles. ‘You’re a romantic.’

  ‘Well, if it’s not a train, what is it?’

  She sits upright, slides forward so her head is just behind yours. ‘Banshees,’ she says quietly. ‘They’re banshees.’ Her mouth is close to your ear. ‘Ooo-ooo,’ she goes. Then she sits back.

  You ask her where you’re supposed to be going, but she’s not listening. You end up driving along the Embankment, thinking maybe she wants dropping off at Cheyne Walk, but she doesn’t even recognise the place. A couple of taxis are pulling away from the Houses of Parliament: end of a late-night debate. There’s a police car parked at the entrance to Downing Street. You wrote a piece about the government for one of the Sunday papers. Nobody paid much attention. When the tramp back at the studio wrote about JFK’s assassination for Playboy, they paid him five thousand dollars. And he got to spend the day at Hefner’s mansion. You’re sure the band have been there, too. Anita probably wasn’t invited.

  ‘Christ!’ she shrieks, so that you flinch at the steering-wheel. ‘I’ve had the most amazing idea!’

  She’s ordering you to turn the car round, cursing you for taking her so far from the studio. You don’t even know whose car it is. But you bend to her urgency, take the Bentley up on to a pavement as you swing back in the direction you’ve just come. Back to the studio, where Anita flies into the recording room.

  And now she’s back again, gathering everyone together. Even the writer wakes to her spell. There’s a French director there, too - Godard, isn’t it? He has a film crew with him. He tried to talk to you about anarchy yesterday, but his English and your French conspired against the dialogue. A circle is forming around the microphone. You’ve all got headphones on, and finally, after instructions from Anita, the track begins to play. Anita leads you all in the dance. Percussion, then the lead vocal with piano accompaniment. On the periphery, you can see the band. They’re in the production suite with the engineer. They look tired, indulgent. Maybe just drunk. Then Anita raises her hand. It’s just about time.

  ‘Ooo-ooo! Ooo-ooo!’

  ‘Ooo-ooo! Ooo-ooo!’

  And you’re the banshee in a rock and roll band . . .

  Where is this party? The tall windows are draped with black velvet. Candles; red lightbulbs; batik scarves thrown over lampshades. Sweet herbal fug in the air. Drug cocktails a speciality de la maison. The host - you’ve barely spoken with him - is minor aristocracy according to one of your sources, dabbles in the stock market according to another. The food has mostly gone. Guests have been folding up multiple slices of smoked salmon and cramming them into already bloated cheeks.It’s hard to tell because of the lighting, but nobody looks really well. Faces are pierrot white, or would be in daylight, in sunshine. Is there sunshine outside? Watches are being removed at the door, taken away and hidden by the host. No clocks. No telephones, radio, TV.

  ‘We’re out of time,’ he’d said, smiling. ‘This party does not exist in time. And we keep on partying till nineteen-seventy. ’

  You’d felt like asking him how anyone would know when nineteen-seventy arrived, but then someone had passed you a joint and you hadn’t asked any questions after that for quite a while.

  What was it? Not just hash: hash you can handle. Some altogether weightier matter: a touch of heroin in the mix? A well-toked speedball? There’s music playing, and bodies strewn over the floor and the sofas and the scatter-cushions. You were brought here by two of your subjects - you’ve begun to think of them as ‘subjects’, not that you’re their master, quite the reverse - but now you can’t see anyone you know. Jeff the Nose has been and gone. Klein was invited apparently, but no way would he show: rumours of contract difficulties, of money owed. A Beatle . . . did a blessed Beatle drift past your eyeline an hour or more ago? And did he look too mortal?

  Kenneth Anger was in town, but declined your request for an interv
iew. He had conversations with your subjects behind closed doors. Some people think Anger is a magus. You know who he wants to cast in his next film, Lucifer Rising. You know who he thinks would make the perfect Lucifer, the preterperfect Beelzebub.

  Everyone knows.

  You’ve been reading a book, The Master and Margarita. Marianne gave it to Mick. Bulgakov’s novel gave him notions; hardened up ‘Tea and Sympathy’, turned it into something stranger and more wonderful. You wonder if it’ll get airtime. You didn’t just sing backing vocals on that song, you became part of something bigger.

  Something you’ve so far failed to put into words.

  A woman is handing you a joint. Her eyelashes are thickened to spider legs. Her long straw-coloured hair has been braided and piled atop her head, looking like coiled snakes.

  ‘Medusa,’ you intone. ‘Will you turn me to stone?’

  She ignores the question, asks you something about Clapton, and you’re shaking your head as you inhale.

  ‘Bailey?’ she tries. You shake your head again and she moves away, her snakes writhing, but that’s all right, because inside your head you can hear percussion and jungle vocals.

  Primal: that’s the word you’ve been searching for . . . And now you have it, you don’t know what to do with it.

  The party is carried along by its own momentum. Guests come and go, but the core group stays, becoming stronger. Then suddenly a decision is made and everyone’s groping for jackets and scarves, flouncing out of the flat and down the stairs. It’s evening, and the fresh air feels like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You suck it in, and listen to the traffic. Cars and taxi cabs, everyone’s heading somewhere and you’re part of the flow. A ten-minute ride, and you’re spilling out of the vehicles, scurrying back indoors. A nightclub this time, the Vesuvio. You’ve been here before, but never in such exalted company.

  There’s someone tugging at your sleeve. You’re wearing the ruffled white shirt which you’ve been told makes you ‘ever so slightly Byronic’. An arm around your shoulder, lips pressed to your ear.